MATHEMATICAL FICTION:

a list compiled by Alex Kasman (College of Charleston)

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Wang's Carpets (1995)
Greg Egan
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This short story about a life form based on Wang Tiles first appeared in 1995 in Greg Bear's New Legends collection but was later expanded into an entire novel. For more information, see my entry on the novel that grew out of it, Egan's Diaspora.

Contributed by Catherine Asaro

I enjoyed your section on Wang/s Carpets/Dispora by Greg Egan. He does a brilliant job. I wrote a 6000 word essay on Wang's Carpets years ago and felt like I barely scratched the surface. His ideas are brilliant. The essay is called "Strange Loops of Wonder." It first appeared in Tangent magazine and was later reprinted in Projections: Science Fiction in Literature & Film edited by Lou Anders.

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Works Similar to Wang's Carpets
According to my `secret formula', the following works of mathematical fiction are similar to this one:
  1. Diaspora by Greg Egan
  2. Luminous by Greg Egan
  3. Transition Dreams by Greg Egan
  4. Dark Integers by Greg Egan
  5. Distress by Greg Egan
  6. The Planck Dive by Greg Egan
  7. The Eternal Flame [Orthogonal Book Two] by Greg Egan
  8. Incandescence by Greg Egan
  9. Oracle by Greg Egan
  10. Into Darkness by Greg Egan
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Categories:
GenreScience Fiction,
MotifAliens,
TopicComputers/Cryptography, Real Mathematics, Logic/Set Theory,
MediumShort Stories,

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Exciting News: The 1,600th entry was recently added to this database of mathematical fiction! Also, for those of you interested in non-fictional math books let me (shamelessly) plug the recent release of the second edition of my soliton theory textbook.

(Maintained by Alex Kasman, College of Charleston)